1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to fireplace heating and, more particularly, to apparatus for burning stacked newspapers in a fireplace.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Fireplaces are commonly used for heating and for the pleasant ambiance created by the flames of burning fuel; however, wood, the most frequently used fuel, has become relatively expensive in relation to the amount of heat actually delivered to the room in which the fireplace is located. That is, the efficiency of fireplaces when wood is burned therein is quite low since flames produced by the burning of wood are normally small supplying limited radiant heat to the room and since convection heat is limited due to air being supplied to the fire from the room and escaping up the chimney.
A great amount of effort has been expended to increase the efficiency of fireplaces, such efforts primarily being directed to heating air in the fireplace and forcing the heated air into the room and using less expensive fuels. In particular, many attempts have been made to facilitate the burning of newspapers in fireplaces since newspapers, once read, represent a waste material to be disposed of and, thus, are abundantly available at substantially no cost. In the past, attempts to use newspapers as fireplace fuel have been directed to apparatus for rolling the newspapers to simulate logs; however, stacks of newspapers have not been successfully used as fireplace fuel because oxygen cannot get to the entire stack due to ashes smothering or suffocating the fire. Even when a stack of newspapers is laid flat (horizontal) and air is blown on the stack, only a small portion of the top of the stack of newspapers will burn (about one-half inch) before the fire is extinguished by ash smothering. Accordingly, it will be appreciated that prior art attempts to burn newspapers in a fireplace have had the disadvantages of requiring substantial treatment or handling of the newspapers prior to placing the newspapers in the fireplace such as unfolding and separating newspaper pages and billing up the newspaper pages individually.